With the advance of the investigations of the committee responsible for investigating the invasion of the US Capitol, the 6th of January, unusual cases and dramatic reports have come to light that offer new details of the fateful day.
A pro-Trump senator caught fleeing the crowd that invaded the building, ketchup running down the walls of the White House and former vice president Mike Pence’s security guards in fear of dying calling family members are some of the situations that give color to one of the biggest attacks on the American democracy.
Get to know some of the episodes reported in the last hearings.
Trump refused to say the ‘election is over’
Weeks after the election results were announced, Donald Trump was reluctant to admit defeat to Joe Biden. In a video revealed at this Thursday’s hearing (21), the Republican is seen behind the scenes of the recording of a statement on January 7, 2021, refusing to say that “the election is over”.
“I just mean ‘Congress has certified the result’ without saying the election is over, okay?”
Trump recorded the video due to pressure from his inner circle, according to White House aides. The purpose was to condemn the violence of the protesters who had stormed the Capitol the day before.
The recording has an air of comedy because it shows the former president irritated by repetitions in the speech and having difficulty saying a few words. “Yesterday is a hard word for me.”
Pence’s security agents bid farewell to their families
A White House security guard, testifying anonymously, told the US House committee that Secret Service agents assigned to protect then-Vice President Mike Pence were terrified of dying, so they called their families. to say goodbye.
The witness said he could hear what security guards were saying on their radios and reported that as the mob approached the building, “there was a lot of screaming” among the agents. They were also on the verge of using weapons with lethal ammunition, the witness said, also last Thursday.
Election officials suffered persecution
Officials who worked on the 2020 election told the committee in June that they had been harassed by Trump supporters for failing to condone the former president’s lies.
Arizona state election chief Rusty Bowers said a group of armed people picketed his house and accused him of being a “pedophile, pervert and corrupt politician” for refusing to call the election rigged. The episode occurred while his daughter was at home suffering from a serious illness, according to Bowers — she died weeks later.
Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who counted ballots in Atlanta, were accused without evidence of inserting 18,000 votes for Biden into the count. According to Moss, the month after the election, a lawyer for the Republican released a video in which she appears to receive something from her mother.
Trump supporters claimed that it was a USB drive that would have been used to carry out the fraud, but she said in the testimony in the House that the package contained gingerbread candies. “This has turned my life upside down. I don’t want anyone to know my name,” she told the committee.
Pro-Trump Republican Senator Runs Out
After raising his arm in a gesture of encouragement to protesters who were about to storm the Capitol, Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri was not as excited when the crowd entered the building — he ran between building security guards. to escape the confusion.
The somewhat comical footage of the escape — given that Hawley carried documents under his arm, as if going to a meeting — were shown at Thursday’s hearing. A police officer who worked at the time said she was uncomfortable with the senator’s attitude, as he was behind a security barrier when making the gesture of support, but when entering the building he left the task of dealing with the crowd to the officers.
The video with the escape through the corridors of the Capitol served as inspiration for memes with references to songs with the word run, such as “Born to Run”, by Bruce Springesteen, and “Running Up That Hill”, by Kate Bush, a track that won a new life after appearing on the soundtrack of the series “Stranger Things”.
Rudy Giuliani, drunk, advised Trump
Another of Thursday’s revelations was that former Trump attorney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was drunk when he spurred the Republican to declare victory on the night of Election Day 2020, according to a report by Jason Miller, Trump’s former communications adviser.
Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” in advising the Republican to claim he had won, he said. Even with the results of the polls still coming, the lawyer would have suggested that the now ex-president “say we won the victory immediately”. He denied that he was intoxicated.
Ketchup on the White House wall
After then-Justice Secretary William Barr, an ardent Trump supporter, gave an interview to the Associated Press in December 2020 saying there was no election fraud, Trump was so furious that he threw his plate of food at the wall, smearing it with ketchup, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, told the committee in testimony given in late June.
“There was ketchup dripping on the wall and a broken china plate on the floor,” he said, adding that he grabbed a towel and started cleaning the wall along with a presidential valet.
Trump tried to take the wheel of the limousine to the Capitol
In the midst of the January 6 confusion, as the mob advanced on its way to the US Legislative headquarters, Trump reportedly tried to get the direction of the White House limousine from a Secret Service agent when he learned that he would not be taken to Congress. “I’m the goddamn president, take me to the Capitol now,” he said, according to Hutchinson, in the same testimony he gave to the committee in June.
On Truth, the social network he founded, Trump denied that he had tried to take the wheel of the vehicle and called the former aide’s testimony “sick” and “fraudulent”.
